Major And Minor
by Shoiryu
Summary: Music was as inevitable as the flow of water downhill. Demyxcentric.


**MAJOR AND MINOR**

The witch was fascinating, more than she had a right to be. Something about watching her hands make shapes on paper that hadn't been there before made him think of the sad softness he could draw inexplicably from his sitar, noise filling space that had once been empty. Demyx understood that there was power in her small hands, the power of creation, a skill none of the Organization really seemed to have.

Except, perhaps, if he was feeling generous that day, himself.

It wasn't something that could be readily explained to his peers. "You don't get the music, you don't," he'd said indignantly, and Axel's grin was testy in response. "You're right I don't," he'd said, one gloved finger doing a little mocking loop at his temple before he flattened his palm against Demyx's chest and thumped once, hard. "And neither do you, and pretending you do is just a lot of fooling yourself. Now if you want to play, go play some empty stupid top forty hit and leave the rest of us in peace, all right?"

But Demyx didn't hear rock and roll, and the sitar wasn't made for it, not for fast chords or rough riffs. He tucked himself away into secluded corners of the vast castle and he drew long mourning sounds from the instrument, a soft lament for some life past that seemed now to be long beyond him. The sitar had been born with him like a twin, and though they were shaped differently than each other he thought sometimes that they understood each other perfectly well.

The music he made was slow and haunting and reverent, and he watched Axel twitch in rage and discomfort and misunderstanding when it touched his ears, dodged Larxene's shrieks of fury and her thrown furniture and electricity, smiled with false apology at Luxord who gave him long wounded looks, shook his head, and went back to playing endless bored games of poker with his Gamblers.

"It hurts, damn it," Axel hissed in his ear, a hand tight on his collar and his pale eyes blazing with that peculiar inner madness that spoke so accurately of fire. "You have to stop. It's driving me out of my head."

"Further out of it," Roxas murmured indifferently in the background, and Demyx laughed, high pitched and nervous and well aware that either of these two, despite being the closes things to friends a Nobody could possibly have, could kill him easily and might without a second thought.

Demyx knew the others only heard noise, discordant and painful like high frequency humming to human ears. He knew it was like nails on blackboard, understood that it sent Axel and Larxene into rages and made Xigbar and Roxas give him long dirty looks of disapproval.

He couldn't stop. He couldn't sleep when he didn't play and he couldn't eat and he felt the rain outside in the city begging to be echoed in the tense strings of the sitar. His ears filled with the sound of ancient moving rivers and holy water and he knew he could recreate the feeling of submersion, the serenity of deep lakes and oceans that hummed through his veins, just beneath his skin.

He could no more explain himself than he could articulate how it was he'd come to exist with no heart, could only understand that it was so and that it was unavoidable, and Demyx was no fighter, and no man to try to stand against what seemed impossible. He bore no weapon, only that weak power of creation and the water, and though sometimes the two things tried to drown each other out for the most part they existed in tandem within him.

Music was as inevitable as the flow of water downhill.

Eventually he folded himself around the instrument and played outside the witch's doorway, far away from the other members of the Organization. He ignored her when she came to see the source of the sound and stood there, small hands resting on the frame, and stared at him in surprise. He listened as she padded away again after a moment, the sliding rain-sound of the music not nearly loud enough to cover the sound of her bare feet against the smooth polished floor. The rustle of paper and the muted light thump of a veritable bucket of crayons hitting the floor came from behind, but he only squeezed his eyes shut more tightly and stroked out a long and wavering note, rising in pitch like a voice in song.

He played and at first he was self conscious of the very small noise of crayons over paper behind him, aware that she was listening, but she was so quiet and so still for the most part that after a minute or two her presence faded, and the song took over, and it rose up and down along the scale, mimicking far away waterfalls and ocean tide, trembling through the air like vibrations of thunder and rain. The music flowed out, and it echoed back to him off the high pale walls and he harmonized with that, too, sometimes plucking the strings in playful response and sometimes letting the inevitable sadness of the sitar steer itself where it wished to go.

And when he was done and the final note trailed off into trembling nothingness, he lifted his head and opened his eyes and she was looking at him. Her mouth curved up in a smile and she sat up from where she'd sprawled on her stomach and she slid the paper she'd been working on towards him. Then she picked up her crayons with quiet civility, went back into her room, and shut the door.

Demyx looked down at himself on paper, a faceless figure in black ringed by blue and surrounded by musical notes in every color of the rainbow, and he smiled in startled amazement and dawning understanding; creation was eternal once it was shared, and here was his music and his sitar captured forever.

A soul on paper.

He took the drawing, and folded it carefully in half, and slid it into the inner pocket of his coat along with his instruction cards and his hasty napkin-paper scribbled ideas for new tunes, and he left it there against his empty chest in place of other things.

The wonderful thing about creation, he thought, was that unlike a weapon it could become other things, could flex and breath like a living creature in and of itself. It could beat like a heart or sing like a voice or move like colors on paper. It could mean anything the wielder wished.

Anything.


End file.
